More posts with minimal text 
Peeps were hating on it ‘fore I left my comment
Posted in Entertainment.
– June 29, 2009
Why I am not voting Pirate Party.
The swedish Pirate Party has been in the spotlight of the swedish press for quite some time now. Boasting more members than most of the established political parties[1], piratpartiet claims it is infact, a serious political party. However once you really examine their political views and the actions of the party leader, Rickard Falkvinge, one may not be so sure.
The Pirate Party was originally founded to raise opinion on the questions of intellectual property and copyright laws, but has since expanded its program to contain issues of surveillance and personal integrity. But apart from these select topics, the Pirate Party doesn’t actually have any opinions. When it comes to other issues like the wellfare system, immigration, taxes and so on, the pirate party states that they will give away their votes to whoever supports them in the few issues they care about[2]. This means other parties can effectively “piggyback” on the Pirate Party for votes in other questions, which could be more important to society than measly copyright laws.
That’s one of the reasons, and probably the main one for me. But there are more reasons why I won’t vote Pirate Party for the EU Parlamentary Elections.
One of them is their view on copyright. The Pirate Party wants commercial copyright laws to only cover five years.[3] While I can agree that the current model is slightly absurd, 5 years is even more so. Why should someones right to his creation be forcefully taken from him only five years after it was made? The Pirate Party claims most commercial works only generate profit during the first five years. But why should that matter? And by taking away copyright after 5 years you completely nullify the potential of creating any profit later on, even if the original creator would want to. Why should the Pirate Party have the right to decide this instead of the original creator?
The Pirate Party also want’s to ban Digital Rights Management[4]. This comes from their view that they have a right to any cultural work, and DRM effectively inhibits that right. While most DRM technologies today are inneficient and easily worked around, there is no reason that the Pirate Party should have a right to decide how the creator wants to distribute his work. If he wants to inhibit the possibility of his buyers to copy the work it is within his rights to do so.
I’m going to go and vote now, and I’m going to vote for a proper political party which voted against FRA and IPRED, and are against the current direction of copyright laws aswell. The difference being this is actually a proper political party, with real politics.
- http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_%C3%B6ver_politiska_partier_i_Sverige_efter_antal_medlemmar (Swedish) [↩]
- http://www.piratpartiet.se/vagmastarstallning (Swedish) [↩]
- http://www.piratpartiet.se/politik/5_ars_kommersiell_ensamratt (Swedish) [↩]
- http://www.piratpartiet.se/politik/forbud_mot_drm (Swedish) [↩]
– June 7, 2009
Building an Arcade Stick, part 1 – The Plan.
Building an arcade stick is something that I’ve been wanting to try for some time, me and Per have been discussing building one each during the summer. Some time ago we decided on actually doing it and started planning. I’m going to post updates here as the project progresses, but they might be sparse until summer gets here for real 
Well, here is the plan so far;
The Aesthetical
At the beginning I was thinking of doing the case using some fancy type of wood (Cherry tree or Mahogny) for my box, but to save money simple wood will be used. Instead we will focus on the paint job.
We did some quick mockups in Google Sketchup to get a feel for what it would look like (So we know what colors buttons/joystick to order).
Mine first:
My Mockup
And Per’s:
Per's Mockup
The artwork we’re using are of characters from SNK’s Samurai Shodown fighting series, Nakoruru and Rimururu. Our respective characters of choice when we battle out our indifferences in said quality beat em’ up. They are also sisters, maybe we should feel bad for constantly having them fight eachother?
We’re planning on some high-gloss laquer for the finish. Will probably be a lot of work but for a mirror finish it’s totally worth it.
The Technical
We will be using Sanwa buttons (For that generic arcade feel), the actual buttons are Sanwa OBSN-30, a screw in variant. This gives us a few more mm to work with when it comes to the mounting.
A red Sanwa OBSN-30
For the joystick we will be using Seimitsus popular LS-32 variant, a cheap but very good and functional high-quality joystick.
Seimitsu LS-32
These will be mounted and quick-connects will be used so we don’t have to solder on the actual parts. Then they’ll be connected to a terminal block, so there will be no actual soldering involved in changing a button or changing the PCB.
From here we’re thinking of connecting both a wired Xbox 360 controller PCB and a PS1 Dual Shock controller PCB to the buttons at the same time, to maximize compatibility. The 360 controllers are already ordered, and PS1 controllers are dirt cheap these days so we’ll most likely be looking at this setup.
What’s left to do now is pretty much order the arcade parts, get some good chunks of wood, grab those power tools and start going crazy. I’ll keep you updated on any lost limbs.
Posted in Personal.
– May 3, 2009
Katawa Shoujo – Disability Girls
From left to right: Lilly, Hanako, Rin, Shizune, Emi
I don’t think I’ve ever played through a Visual Novel before, I always shunned them away because of their nature, often targeted towards the otaku demographic (This is only my personal opinion though, I’m sure there are lots of great VN’s out there). So VN’s never really appealed to me, but nevertheless I come across them once in a while.
Katawa Shoujo is a Visual Novel where you play as a young boy suffering from Cardiac Arrhytmia. Because of this condition he is transferred to a special school for children with disabilities.
It started out as a omake page (left) in a doujin by an artist known as Raita, with character concepts for a dating sim game. Then somebody got the genius idea of turning it into a real game. A bunch of people got together and now, 2 years after the original doujin was published, a demo has been released.
I wanted to play this game way back when I first saw the omake page, but I didn’t find out about the project of actually turning it into a game until today. I’m playing the demo as I am writing this, and about two hours in I’m completely lost in it.
Not having played any VN’s before I can’t really compare it to something, but considering it being a fanmade project I feel it’s really good. The backgrounds are mostly photographs with some filters to make them look a bit “cartoony”, but they don’t feel out of place. The characters are really well drawn and the dialogue doesn’t feel weird or cheesy.
The characters are pretty much the same as in the omake page, with some slight alterations in design and personality, like giving Rin pants instead of a skirt.
I haven’t gotten that far into the game but It’s still a really fun experience. I might try another VN after this if my opinion of Katawa Shoujo doesn’t change later on
For more information about the game visit the official site at http://katawa-shoujo.com/.
Posted in Entertainment, Life.
– April 29, 2009
